ARTISTS
Song Dong
Song Dong
Song Dong
Window Door Screen – Four Screens No. 2, 2018-2019, Old window/doors, glass, minor, colored plastic mirror, window and door hardware, 200 x 285 x 90 cm. Courtesy the Artist, Pace gallery
Old windows and doors collected from Beijing's hutong districts stand side by side like folding screens. Windows from houses demolished during urban development, each preserving distinct eras and forms with peeling paint, cracked glass, and weathered wooden frames, lean against each other's edges for balance. Despite varying sizes and specifications, they interlock and support one another, creating a new landscape. What would topple alone becomes a sturdy unified structure together. Song Dong collects and reassembles traces of everyday life vanishing in rapidly changing cities, discovering new possibilities in discarded objects. Viewers look through windows then encounter their own reflections in mirrors, experiencing the juxtaposition of personal memory and others' time within this installation where transparency and reflection coexist. Objects deemed useless yet still beautiful, discarded yet holding memories, gain new life through the artist's intervention. A leading figure in Chinese contemporary art since the 1990s, Song Dong has consistently documented and reinterpreted personal and societal transformation through everyday objects.
